


Duality

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, Episode S01E08, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Spoilers if you squint, Wordcount: 100-500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:06:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Perhaps Silver sees the man he knows as Captain Flint fall into the water, but the man who emerges from the waves is anything but.
Kudos: 6





	Duality

**Author's Note:**

> The use of “James” vs “Flint” here is very much intentional.

Flint falls from the ship like a rock, laden with the guns he carries at his sides. The splash he makes is drowned out by the cannon-fire surrounding them.

When James resurfaces, he looks around at the carnage that his own actions have wrought, and he _regrets_. 

There are so many things that he can see clearly, now, as he watches without watching his men flounder about in the sea. He can see Gates, snarling at him, _I told you this was suicide._

 _Not the way I saw it_ , he might have pleaded, had he any more strength left in his body to make such a pathetic plea. After all, he could not have foreseen the men turning on him the way that they had. He could not have foreseen entering the battle at the wrong moment, because Flint had _known_ what was right. 

If only his men hadn’t been so foolish. If only Dufresne had _waited_ with his accusations—

But that is useless to think upon now. One of the men is yelling in pain near his ear, loudly enough to be heard over the Spanish ship’s cannons. 

Instead, a different face swims before his vision. 

_Miranda._

_I’ve failed you_ , James thinks to her, praying against all known odds that she somehow hears the thought. _I’m sorry_. 

Never again will he hold her, or be held by her. Never again will he feel her arms embrace him. It is a bitter taste in his mouth, more bitter than the seawater he has begun to take on. 

He wishes their last meeting together had been sweeter. 

As he sinks into the sea, allowing her sweet embrace to take him instead, his guns and his sins weighing him down, a last face appears in his vision. 

_Thomas._

At least they will see one another once again; at least they will be reunited. _That_ is the only comfort he can find in his failure. 

* * *

When he wakes up on the beach, with Silver’s smug face the only clear thing in his line of blurry vision, he very nearly loses his grip on sanity in his attempt to process it. 

“Why am I still alive?” he asks Dufresne. He is genuinely shocked at the mere fact that he is not dead. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?” _Why did the sea not claim me yet? Do we not all go back to her in our time?_

It is only the sight of the Urca that brings his sanity flying back to him. When he turns back to the men ( _his_ men), it is Flint who stares them down. 


End file.
